"Professor" Irwin Corey (born July 29, 1914) is an American comic, film actor and left-wing political activist, who is often billed as "The World's Foremost Authority." He introduced his unscripted, improvisational style of stand-up comedy at Enrico Banducci's San Francisco club the hungry i.
Lenny Bruce once described Corey as "one of the most brilliant comedians of all time".
Personal lifeIrwin Corey was born in 1914 in Brooklyn, New York. Poverty stricken, his parents were forced to place him and his five siblings in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York, where Corey remained until the age of 13, when he rode the rails out to California. During the Great Depression, he worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps, and while working his way back East, became a featherweight Golden Gloves boxing champion.
Corey has always supported left-wing politics. "When I tried to join the Communist Party, they called me an anarchist."[4] He has appeared in support of Cuban children, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the American Communist Party, which resulted in his eventual Hollywood blacklisting in the 1950s, the effects of which he says still linger to this day. (Corey never returned to Late Night with David Letterman after his first appearance in 1982, which he claimed was a result of the blacklist still being in effect.) During the 1960 election, Corey campaigned for president on Hugh Hefner's Playboy ticket. Corey was a frequent guest on the "Tonight Show" hosted by Johnny Carson during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
He accepted the National Book Award Fiction Citation on behalf of Thomas Pynchon for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974. He is also briefly mentioned in Chapter 22 of the Robert A. Heinlein novel Friday, but as "the World's Greatest Authority."
Irwin Corey resides in the Murray Hill neighborhood of New York City.
In 2011, it was reported that for seventeen years Corey has panhandled for small change from motorists emerging from the Queens-Midtown Tunnel near his home. He uses the money to buy medical supplies for children in Cuba.
Career
Comedy
In 1938, Corey was back in New York, where he got a job writing and performing in Pins and Needles, a musical comedy revue about a union organizer in the garment trade in New York. He was fired from this job (he has said) for his union organizing activities, the irony of which was not lost on him. Five years later, he was working on another revue, New Faces of 1943 and appearing at the Village Vanguard, doing his stand-up comedy routine. He was drafted during World War II, but was discharged after six months, after (according to Corey) convincing an Army psychiatrist that he was a homosexual.
From the late 1940s he cultivated his "Professor" character. Dressed in seedy formal wear and sneakers, with his bushy hair sprouting in all directions, Corey would amble on stage in a preoccupied manner, then begin his monologue with "However ..." He created a new style of doublespeak comedy; instead of making up nonsense words like "krelman" and "trilloweg," like double-talker Al Kelly, the Professor would season his speech with many long and florid, but authentic, words. The professor would then launch into nonsensical observations about anything under the sun, but seldom actually making sense. Changing topics suddenly, he would wander around the stage, pontificating all the while. His very quick wit allowed him to hold his own against the most stubborn straight man, heckler or interviewer.
One notable fan of Corey's comedy was Ayn Rand, and influential theatre critic Kenneth Tynan once wrote of the Professor in The New Yorker, "Corey is a cultural clown, a parody of literacy, a travesty of all that our civilization holds dear, and one of the funniest grotesques in America. He is Chaplin's tramp with a college education".
In 1951, Corey appeared as Abou Ben Atom the Genie in the cult classic flop Broadway musical Flahooley along with Yma Sumac, the Bil and Cora Baird Marionettes and Barbara Cook (in her Broadway debut). Corey's performance of "Springtime Cometh" can be heard on the show's original cast album.
Film and television
Corey appeared occasionally in 1950s television as a character actor. He is memorable in an episode of The Phil Silvers Show titled "Bilko's Grand Hotel", in which Corey plays an unkempt Bowery bum being passed off as a hotelier by Sgt. Bilko. The Professor was a frequent guest comic on variety shows and a guest panelist on game shows during the 1960s and 1970s.
Corey became so synonymous with comic erudition that, when a Rhode Island television station wanted a spokesman to explain changes in network affiliations, Corey got the job. Lecturing with pointer in hand, Corey manipulated magnetic signs to demonstrate how television schedules would be disrupted. By the end of the announcement, the visual aids were in shambles and the professor, as usual, had meandered from his original point.
Corey often appeared on Steve Allen's late night show, syndicated by Westinghouse, The Steve Allen Show (1962–1964), whereon he would end his rambling stand-up routine with Allen literally chasing him off the stage. He also guest starred on the syndicated talk show version of The Donald O'Connor Show.
"Professor" Irwin Corey's stage persona bears some similarities to that of "Professor" Stanley Unwin.
Corey has appeared in Shakespearean theater; he was one of the gravediggers in a production of Hamlet. He is seldom seen on stage today, something he attributes to lasting effects of his 1950s blacklisting.
Family
He was married for 70 years to his wife, Fran, who died in May 2011.[2] The Coreys had one son, Richard, a painter, and a grandson named Amadeo.[
It does seem to be the height of hypcrisy that a guy who lives in a 3-and-a-half million dollar appartment in New York pretends to be homeless so he can get donations for a children's charity in Cuba. You'd think if he cared that much, he'd sell his apartment and give that three and a half million to the kid's charity. Why not spend his own money, instead of other people's, on it?
RUSH: I am so depressed today, I just can't tell you. (interruption) Well, there is a lot wrong. I found out over the weekend that one of my all-time -- this is such an unkind cut -- I found out that one of my all-time favorite comedians is not just a leftist, he's a communist.
Professor Irwin Corey. You remember Professor Irwin Corey? Professor Irwin Corey is 97 years old. He lives in Manhattan. He has a schtick now. He pretends to be homeless and he panhandles. He hits people up in their cars for donations for a children's charity in Cuba. And the New York Post had a little story on this over the weekend, a picture of the guy.
The New York Times has done an expose of the guy. He lives in a three-and-a-half-million-dollar apartment. He's not homeless, it's just part of his schtick, but he's a well-known anarchist, communist. There are pictures of him with Castro handing over money to this children's charity there. Professor Irwin Corey is one of the reasons I used to stay up late as a kid to watch The Tonight Show. So I'm doing show prep yesterday, I read this, and it's not just a leftist, that would be bad enough. He's a full-fledged communist.
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